China’s global image faces challenges - but if asked to choose between its national interests and preserving its national image, China would choose the former. A recent poll conducted by the BBC World Service shows that China’s international image is not that great around the world. Although this year China’s international image is equally divided (42 percent vs. 42 percent) between those who think China’s influence is positive and those who think it is negative, China’s image in Japan and South Korea (two of China’s most important Asian neighbors) is quite negative.

Thirty-seven young people from across the Balkans gathered in Turkey last month to participate in a youth conference in order to boost interaction between Turkey and the Balkan countries. The new project, organised by the Prime Ministry's Office of Public Diplomacy, invited young people from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Bulgaria, Kosovo and Macedonia.

As the Minsk History Museum in Belarus holds an exhibition celebrating the USSR, we look back at some of the best Soviet poster art.

According to Martha Bayles, a professor of humanities at Boston College, public diplomacy has disappeared. Her new book is “Through a Screen Darkly: Popular Culture, Public Diplomacy, and America’s Image Abroad.”

On a  sultry afternoon in the city when the rest of the Kolkatans were busy with their routine tasks, a small crowd cheered throughout the performance by hip- hop artists Next Level at the American Center. The performers from the US entertained the audience along with local hip-hop enthusiasts and dancers. Next level programme is an initiative sponsored by the US Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs in association with the University of North Carolina's Department of Music.

South Korea and China will hold a joint public diplomacy forum in Beijing next week to discuss ways to step up bilateral exchange in non-political sectors, a foreign ministry official here said Thursday.

The China Institute will hold its annual gala today, celebrating the 88th year since its founding in 1926 and making it the oldest US-China cultural organization in the United States.  The China Institute in Manhattan was established by American and Chinese educators, including John Dewey, Hu Shih, president of Peking University and China's ambassador to the US, and Kuo Pingwen, founder of the National Southeastern University in China.